Saturday, April 18, 2009

Taiwan's Madoff: with bonus unsolved murder!

Wall Street Journal went to town on the amazing Danny Pang with a wonderful investigative piece......

Mr. Pang's résumé depicts a glittering success story: a Taiwanese immigrant who earned an M.B.A., worked on Wall Street and now heads a $4 billion investment fund. He also became a partner in another fund firm with business luminaries such as Frank Carlucci, the former defense secretary and ex-Carlyle Group chairman, and former Lockheed Martin Chief Executive Norman Augustine.

But both Mr. Pang's past and his business may not be quite as they appear. The university from which he says he has an M.B.A. and another degree says it has no record of either. Morgan Stanley, where Mr. Pang's bio says he was a senior vice president and senior high-tech merger adviser, says it can find no record it ever employed him.

A former president of the firm Mr. Pang heads -- Private Equity Management Group Inc. in Irvine, Calif. -- says Mr. Pang told him in 2007 that part of the enterprise involved a Ponzi scheme. The executive also alleges that Mr. Pang improperly used some of investors' cash for the firm's benefit and once told him to deceive investors with a fake insurance policy.

The article is muuuuch too long to excerpt here. Go read it. My man Johnny Neihu had a rollicking good time with the tale as well today... thanks to all the readers who forwarded it to me.

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